


for a moment and a lifetime

by Pinnpricks



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Complete, F/M, Forbidden Love, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 17:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3658692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinnpricks/pseuds/Pinnpricks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Over the years an impossible distance had opened up like a yawning chasm between them. The friendship of Katara and Zuko was no longer. Now they were 'the Avatar’s wife' and 'the Fire Lord'. Their titles defined their relationship, and it was one of respect and restraint. Those nights of platonic intimacy in the garden were lost to them. They had been children confiding to each other under the light of the moon and now they were adults, dealing with the aftermath."</p><p>Five years after the war, Tenzin is born. Katara pays Zuko a visit, trying to make up for lost time. The past repeats itself. Post-canon AU, partially LoK compliant. A rewrite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Katara

**Author's Note:**

> From a very old fic of mine, long before LoK was even announced. It is called "years later" on FFnet, if anybody wants to compare. The original story has been completely rewritten and lengthened. Enjoy, kudos if you like, kisses for all regardless.

Aang ascended into the air on Appa’s back. Katara watched him fly away. He’s all smiles, but stress made lines in his face when he waved to her. Her eyes followed him over the horizon. She knew he didn't want to do this, but his duty as the Avatar came before her, before their family. She knew that, but bitterness still weighed in the cavity between her heart and her ribs. It was unfair of her to think that way, but she cradled their three-month old child in her arms. If there was a time she might be a little bit selfish, it might be now.

At least Tenzin had been manageable for most of the journey. Otherwise, Katara might not have made it this far. Although though she felt uneasy in this familiar-yet-different place, that wasn’t enough to stop relief from flooding her veins at the same time. A weight lifted off her chest with Aang’s departure, wrong as that was.

Katara drew her son closer to her as she looked around the private courtyard for any sign of Zuko. She had told him she was arriving this morning. Although, she wasn't even sure if he'd had the time to read her hastily written letter to him. He was a busy man, after all. Following the end of the war, they had exchanged a lot of letters, but over time those letters came further and further apart.

She had woken up one day realizing that Zuko had just stopped replying. At the time, Katara had shrugged and carried on, but his dismissal burrowed under her skin. Perhaps she should have expected it, with the way he implied that the work was overwhelming him, the fact that stress bled through his ink strokes. Her memory of his last letter still seared. Yet, Zuko had not been the only one of them to change.

It hadn’t been so bad that first year. They were still united, trying to stave off civil war and quell rebellions. Team Avatar, second edition. They relocated their base to Zuko’s study. They went to galas and meetings as diplomats and delegates, united under Aang. They worked day and night to secure Zuko’s tenuous grasp on the Fire Nation. Instead of making peace they were keeping it, and the gap between the two turned out to be more narrow than any of them expected, and harder than anything they had prepared for. That year turned their righteousness into unyielding steel.

Shortly after things stabilized, Toph left to pursue glory in the Earth Kingdom. Sokka and Suki took a deserved vacation to the Kyoshi Islands. Katara hadn’t wanted to leave, but Aang nearly dragged her out the door in the end. He said they had other obligations, like restoring the Air Temples. He was right, but he also promised that the two of them would visit often.

Toph occasionally had a note dictated to them. She told Katara about her adventures in the Earth Kingdom and beyond. She had taken back her champion’s belt for old times’ sake, living life as a quasi-hermit, as withdrawn as somebody as famous as her could be. She said she was in the middle of a huge metalbending project. Something world-shattering, she said. Katara knew it would be.

Suki had recently given birth to a daughter. She and Sokka lived together in the Southern Water Tribes. Katara’s father passed the mantle of tribe leader on to his son. Katara knew Sokka would need easing into that kind of responsibility, but she was half a world away and unable to guide him on any of the day-to-day matters that dictated leadership. He would grow into it without her, and that knowledge created a yearning in her. Although he wrote to her for advice sometimes, she knew there had to be a lot that he wasn’t telling her.

There were times she had woken up hardly believing all the time that passed. After they had first splintered from one another Katara rose, still expecting to hear Toph bickering with somebody, for Zuko to be off practicing his bending forms, and she had even looked forward to Sokka’s snoring. When she realized that those days were past gone a dull ache settled into her chest, never fully fading.

In the blink of an eye five more years had gone by as easily as the tide. Katara saw them all at least once a year, at the annual Fire Nation Peace Summit. The summit was a culmination of the things they had worked so hard for, followed by a gala meant to commemorate the end of the war, and to pay respect to those who had been lost.

Their last meeting had been ten months ago. Everybody looked so different. Toph was a grown woman, Sokka was married with child, and Zuko was older. Obviously. But also more mature, more regal. He had grown from a boy to a man, then finally to a king. She wondered how changed she seemed to them.

Although their shared past was lined by tragedy, Katara couldn’t help but look at those sepia-tinged memories with longing. Things had been simpler, then. There had been no time to stop and think. They did what they had to do, and this was the result of all that. They played their parts with desperation they sometimes mistook for destiny.

The nostalgia that the gardens inspired in her passed when Tenzin started grabbing her clothes. She made her way to Zuko’s office. Katara had long since memorized its location. As she walked through the palace, guards and servants would bow to her. It had been so long, but she was still known in the Fire Kingdom. She had been Zuko’s political escort for the year they were working out of the palace. It must have been hard to forget the only Water Tribe girl referred to as “Lady Katara”. Of course, the title was now rarely used. She was officially known as the Avatar’s wife, his waterbender.

Katara paused in front of Zuko’s door. She shifted Tenzin in her arms to free a hand. The baby gurgled a bit. She took a breath before knocking. When her fist hit the solid wood door, it pounded through her bones. She waited. For a moment she almost believed he wasn’t there. Katara turned and stopped in her tracks when the door swung open behind her.

Five years since her last personal visit. Ten months since she had seen his face. Ice ran down her spine though Katara couldn’t say why. She looked over her shoulder, and there he was. His hair swept his shoulders and his lips pressed a thin line. He hesitated like he was debating how he should greet her.

“Katara.”

The simple address had an effect on her that neither of them could have anticipated. All at once, she felt like throwing her arms around him and telling him that she’d missed him. They hadn’t had a chance to speak to each other properly in years. Katara smiled at him warmly, but the gesture was not returned. There was something in his eyes that spoke of distance, and it made her joy cool. Zuko stood to the side, allowing the waterbender entrance into the study, but he stared through her and into the hall beyond.

As Katara passed by him, she could feel no fondness. Where there had once been six chairs in this study, there were now only two, not including Zuko’s own. Just another sign that the past had passed for all of them. He shut the door behind her and stood before it, as if he were waiting.

“Did you get my letter?” Katara asked. She hadn’t forgotten that he did not send anyone for her and Tenzin’s arrival.

“I did.”

“Oh.”

The coldness in his voice was palpable, and it stripped her of her girlish eagerness to see him. Katara had been so caught up in the moment that she thought it would be like before. He made no motions to explain his aloofness, or mutter conciliatory words. He had read her letter and he hadn’t cared enough to show up. The Fire Lord cleared his throat, and she was forced to look up from Tenzin.

“Tea?”

She eyed him with uncertainty before saying “Sure.”

He poured it for her without meeting her eyes. Katara took a seat in front of his desk. He sat across from her, the carved oak table a barrier between them. She picked up the cup and took a sip. The tea seared her throat, sweet and fragrant, his favourite Jasmine. Katara cradled Tenzin in the crook of her arm. The boy was sleeping blissfully, still tired from the journey.

“How is Aang?” Zuko asked, trying to be casual.

“He’s doing fine. He’s on his way to Ba Sing Se now.”

“I know.”

Yes, of course he did. Why, then, did he ask? It was in the letter Katara had sent him, along with some details about Tenzin. She noticed that Zuko hadn’t offered anything but a cursory glance to her son. Silence settled over them again, but this time Katara was the one who broke it.

“How have you been?”

“Good.”

The waterbender pursed her lips. She was getting frustrated at his curtness. Why had he invited her into his study if he wasn’t willing to have a conversation? Zuko coughed.

“Tenzin?”

And at that she perked up. A smile bloomed on her face. She couldn’t resist. Katara raised him up in her arms so Zuko could see him.

“He's perfect. Healthy and happy.”

Her pride in her son was evident in her voice, even if her mind was asea in regards to how she had gotten here, in this study, with a baby. Another pause. She pursed her lips.

“Has the Fire Nation been prosperous these last few years?”

“Our economy is on the rise once again.”

“How are your ministers?” Katara remembered the rages his meetings used to cause. In this very room she had comforted him when steam poured from his nostrils when all he wanted was to rip the crown from his topknot. They had sat in these chairs and pulled their legs up, drinking tea with the moon high in the night sky.

“They’re the same as ever.”

He stopped again after that, putting no effort into keeping the conversation flowing. Frustration mounted within her. She hadn’t come here to be brushed off as a nuisance. Five years ago Katara helped him write speeches, awake until the crack of dawn. She reviewed documents, balanced accounts, saw things that not even his ministers did. She wrote letters until the ink stained her hands so black she thought it would never wash out. At times, she even cooked for them during those late nights, brought him food when he forgot to eat. She saw him during his weakest moments, when the stress and the memories and the guilt caught up to him. She knew how the scar in his chest still gave him pain.

It was as if none of that had ever happened. She was now the same to him as she was to everyone else. The Avatar’s wife, a figurehead for peace. Maybe she let herself become that. Maybe she had no one else to blame.

Katara looked up, about to announce her intent to leave him in the solitude he so desired, but the only thing she saw was his hand resting upon the table, and his ring finger. Where it had been bare before, there was now a slim golden band around it, so natural it could have always been there. Her blood chilled in her veins. She clutched Tenzin closer and he stirred. As if he could feel uneasiness radiating from her.

“So you’re engaged?” In those words there was only a veil of civility. This bothered her. She hated that it did. She clearly remembered how he’d claimed the majority of the women in court were “fire-breathing dragon vipers”. Katara swallowed the lump in her throat.

Zuko had been writing something, but he looked at her directly for the first time since he’d opened the door.

“I am.” He said, and his voice was too quiet.

“When is the wedding?”

“Two months from now.”

“Your bride?”

“Mai.”

She wasn’t surprised at the match or the date. Two months from now meant the summit. Zuko was going to be married either shortly before or after it, and the timing was no coincidence. It was the one time of the year Team Avatar would have to clear their schedules. Katara would be there. This was reality. She swallowed the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

She always thought it unusual that Zuko hadn’t married first, considering the fact that he was the only one in great need of an heir. Goodness knows how much that would have helped during the post-war turmoil. She hadn’t dwelled on it back then, but now that his wedding was actually happening it hit her with the force of a rhino bull. This knowledge conjured not shock, but a kind of grief for something nursed over years. Grief despite the fact that Zuko was right there, nearer than he’d been in many years. In her daze she blurted out a question that sounded more like a demand.

“Do you love her?”

Zuko’s fists clenched at the same time her own did. The glacier of her eyes met molten gold. A match had been struck in the air between them.

“She’s going to be my wife.” His voice was harder than the bedrock beneath the palace, sparks crackling in the pause between each word. Katara stood abruptly, knocking over her own chair. She fidgeted with Tenzin’s wrapping to keep her hands from shaking. He woke up.

“That’s not an answer.” She bit out.

What he said next made her feel as if he had gone ahead and poured ice down her throat.

“Did you love Aang?”

Katara’s eyes widened. His words had rendered her speechless. That was a low blow, and she saw the regret wash over his face even while he’d uttered the phrase. He had undone her in the space of a few seconds. Those words hung above the two of them as ghosts, suspended in time. Katara knew this day would follow them far into the future. This was when their paradigm shifted.

He had dared to bring up that night just to hurt her. She would have triggered an ice age in his study had Tenzin not started crying.

Katara said nothing more before exiting his study, leaving his tea frozen in the pot behind her. A servant found her fleeing through the halls with no true destination in mind. Tears sprung into her eyes, but they remained desperately contained. The maid escorted Katara to her rooms and left her in silence.

That was how a master waterbender and venerated diplomat ended up alone and sobbing in a guest bedroom in the Fire Lord’s palace. Tears ran rivets down her cheeks while she nursed her child. She found her mind wandering back to the conversation she and Aang had before they left the air temple.

> _“Why do you want to go to the Fire Nation? You could stay here. Tenzin is too young to travel.”_
> 
> _“Aang, don’t be ridiculous. I know I can take care of him, but there’s nobody else here. What if, spirits forbid, something happens to me? You could be gone for a month. The Fire Nation is our best option.”_
> 
> _He paused in contemplation, and Katara took that opportunity to inundate him with persuasion. “I haven’t seen Zuko since last year. We haven’t had a chance to talk in so long. This really is our best choice.”_
> 
> _The Fire Lord was the most reliable, and the closest. The same could not be said for Toph, who had all but vanished to the plains of the Earth Kingdom between her short notes. Sokka wasn’t even an option because he was at the South Pole. In the end Aang agreed. Katara felt excited to finally speak with Zuko again. Properly, this time._

She thought she’d be welcomed with open arms, and that they’d spend our time reminiscing about the past and making plans for the future. Katara thought he would be overjoyed that he was Tenzin’s godfather. She didn’t know what she had done to him, to be treated like an outsider again. It was true that they hadn’t been so close in recent years, but with what they went through together... That didn’t seem right. He hadn’t even told her about his engagement willfully. Once, they had been allies. She could hardly even link the man in that study with the Zuko she had fought beside, cried beside. He had alienated her from him.

“I thought we were friends, Zuko!” She shouted. The walls didn't reply. She shoved at her tears with the heel of her palm, only succeeding in smearing them over her cheeks. Tenzin didn’t seem to mind that much. Katara tucked him into the crib they had provided her with and then collapsed on her bed. She went to sleep with her head a mess, and her heart more than a little bit bruised.

> _“Zuko.” She called. The Fire Lord looked up, surprise on his face. She grinned at him. “What are you doing out here?"_
> 
> _He contemplated his answer for a moment, letting his shoulders loosen. He held some bread in his hands, and the turtle ducks in the pond at his feet were pecking at the pieces floating around._
> 
> _He could not lie to her. “I’m just relaxing.” He said, wry smile on his face._
> 
> _She laughed. “The great Fire Lord, relaxing? I’ve never heard of that before.”_
> 
> _“Funny. I’m not so austere all the time, you know.”_
> 
> _Oh, I know. It’s impossible to be so tense in your sleep, after all.” She was still teasing him, but he didn’t mind. She ended up joining him on the stone bench._
> 
> _“Why are you still up?” He asked._
> 
> _“For the same reason you are.” She told him. Her eyes were playful, but he could see the edges of insomnia that ringed them._
> 
> _“You’re worried?” Or scared. Uncertain. Tormented. Like him. He didn’t want her to feel like him. The prospect seemed to give her pause. She pursed her lips._
> 
> _“I am. About lots of things.”_
> 
> _His curiosity was piqued. “What things?”_
> 
> _She was reluctant to tell him, and he read the trepidation on her face like he read letters. He knew her better than she could understand._
> 
> _“Just… everything, maybe. Everyone.” And he knew she wasn’t trying to avoid the subject outright. Just building up to it. He gave her space for her words._
> 
> _They had a lot of things to think about in those days. Things like scars and threats and unruly nobles, but he would never have guessed correctly._
> 
> _“Mostly just… Aang.”_

 


	2. Katara, second

Katara woke up to the sound of somebody knocking on her door. She was vaguely aware of the smattering of dried tears that painted her cheeks. She yelled “Just a second!” She flicked her wrist and used water from a basin to wash the signs of yesterday from her face.

To her dismay, it was that same infuriating Fire Lord who stood at her door. He glanced at the crib in the corner of the room before looking back at her. It struck Katara that Zuko had, in fact, arranged for her room to be prepared beforehand, with the crib and the children’s toys. She had been too angry to see that yesterday. In some small way he had showed her he cared. But that couldn’t make up for the words they had exchanged.

He looked back at up at her. She was still wearing her wrinkled traveling clothes, her hair a mess. She knew she must have been an eyesore, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

“Can we… talk?” He choked out, off-key. Katara sensed the shade of an apology in his voice. She pursed her lips. She knew she couldn’t avoid him forever, and it was far better for them to resolve their issues quickly. She nodded, and he led the way.

Zuko walked fast. She struggled to keep pace with him, and that was how she knew he was restless. He even fiddled with the tassels on his robe. He could be so obvious.

Zuko sighed, breaking up the sounds of their feet hitting the ground. “I’m sorry, Katara.” He looked at her, and she could see the anguish pool in his eyes. “What I said was awful. I just…”

Katara found herself shaking her head. She had been hurt, but she also wanted to forgive him. She didn’t want to waste their time with harsh words. “No, Zuko. It wasn’t my business to ask you about M-” She stopped herself, somehow unable to finish that name. “- your fiance.” She finished painfully, and she found that her expression was reflected back to her by Zuko.

“I’m not your political advisor any more.” Or his escort, or really anyone who belonged in his life. The thoughts hit like lashes. Katara was simply his past now.

Nothing of importance passed through their lips after that. They made idle chatter about life as a nomad, the work on the Air Temples and Toph’s recent exploits, until Zuko was called away to a meeting with his ministers. Katara returned to her room to care for Tenzin, still sound asleep in his crib. Nothing was like how it had been. Not her, and certainly not Zuko.

They were no longer connected. Over the years an impossible distance had opened up like a yawning chasm between them. The friendship of Katara and Zuko was no longer. Now they were 'the Avatar’s wife' and 'the Fire Lord'. Their titles defined their relationship, and it was one of respect and restraint. Those nights of platonic intimacy in the garden were lost to them. They had been children confiding to each other under the light of the moon, and now they were adults, dealing with the aftermath.

That was what made her heart fall. The emotions of the girl she was once was were no more than ancient history, no longer fit to be felt. She sealed them in a chest and left it in the back of her mind. Katara knew Zuko had acknowledged that truth before she did, when he unsealed her final letter to him.

> _“What about Aang?”_
> 
> _The waterbender sighed, and he felt his heart lurch in empathy for her. “I don't know if he's right for me.”_
> 
> _Zuko could tell, but he’d never say that out loud. She continued. “He loves me so much, and I just…”_
> 
> _“Don’t.” He finished for her. He didn’t want to listen to her call herself selfish for knowing what she wanted. He knew her. He knew that selfish was the opposite of what she was._
> 
> _She was hauntingly beautiful in the pale moonlight, and also very sad.  The ripples of the lake reflected pearlescent off her skin._
> 
> _“Not now, at least. What can I do, though? I don't have a choice.” She said, her eyes gazing far into the night sky. She was searching for other decisions in the stars and she was coming up short._
> 
> _He thought all she had to do was look in front of her, but he knew she couldn't possibly love him, and neither could she love the air boy she’d saved almost two years ago. Duty trapped her. Trapped them all, really._
> 
> _“What about you, Zuko?”_

A week passed Katara by uneventfully. She stayed in her room most of time, leaving to eat breakfast with the Fire Lord every morning. It had been a week’s worth of meaningless chit chat about the weather, about Sokka and Toph and the Air Temples and all the other things they both already knew. She could not animate herself more about those topics retreaded dozens of times. But what else could they talk about? The past felt too forbidding, and the future too melancholy.

On the ninth day, there was an addition to their solemn party of two. Zuko cleared his throat and stood up in a sweep of red silks. He had not been expecting company. Katara stood as well. She recognized the other woman instantly despite a distance of years. Her demeanor was unmistakable in any context.

“Hello, Mai.” She inclined her head as greeting.

“Good day, Katara.” She replied. She performed a slight bow, every bit as formal as she had always been.

In five years Mai hadn’t changed all that much. Perhaps because she always seemed older than she was. Like the rest of them, she had simply grown into herself. Her sleek hair was done up in an ornate style and decorated with beautiful pins. Katara wondered if they were sharpened, or tipped with poison. Mai’s gown was still sensible, but the fabric was finer, with intricate embroidery flowing through it. She was taller, and that made her look even more slender. Together, she and Zuko looked nothing short of regal.

They talked quietly in front of her, and Katara caught whispers about politics. It reminded her of how she once sat where Mai was, and that made her lose her appetite. Not jealousy, but something heavier. She suffered through half of her plate before a servant came to rescue her, telling her that Tenzin had woken up and started crying.

Katara tried not to make it obvious that she was escaping the room, but it probably wasn't a very convincing act. After she left, she leaned her back against the cold wood of the doors to the dining hall. She could listen to them talk more easily from here, broken up by Zuko’s deep laughter and Mai’s low chuckle. That was it, then. It had taken five years, but Zuko had found himself a suitable companion. Mai was intelligent and poised, and Katara knew that she was utterly loyal to him.

She couldn’t wait to see their graceful, amber-eyed children.

She knew perfectly well that she was behaving irrationally, but that knowledge didn’t halt the sharp ache that punctured her chest. This had been her first extended visit to him in years, but she hadn’t gotten any closure, just more pain. Her vision seemed filtered in dull greys.

Katara wondered what she had been expecting.

* * *

“Shh, Tenzin. Mommy’s here.” She cooed softly as she rocked her son in her arms. Large blue eyes stared up at her, brimming with tears. Tenzin had inherited Aang’s light, nearly translucent skin. Katara wasn’t sure what else, though. She had never been good at the game of picking out facial features. Instead, she settled with the assertion that Tenzin would grow into a good and kind man. That conviction was enough for her.

He must have also been psychic, because he kept saving her when she needed it most. That first day in Zuko’s study, and even now. He was a well-behaved baby, only crying when he felt the absolute need to. Over the past week she read to him with exquisite children’s books from the palace’s vast library. The pages were gilded, and she resolved to take some back with her. She sang him Water Tribe lullabies. He seemed to enjoy both equally.

Katara could never regret having Tenzin, despite the always unsteady feelings she possessed for his father. He was her son, and she would love him unconditionally. He gave her a toothless smile, as if sensing her declaration, and she smiled back at him. Tenzin was her child, her beautiful child. A pang of guilt flashed in her eyes.

When she first realized she was pregnant, she had been horrified. She understood that it would happen, but she was utterly unprepared for the reality of it. Aang was overjoyed. Of course he was. Katara couldn’t begrudge him that happiness. She pretended that she was as glad as he was, but the apprehension sank in her stomach like a stone. She wrote ebullient letters to everyone, so they could share in the good news. Of all the people she mailed, Zuko was the only one who hadn’t replied. Now she knew why- it didn’t seem as if he wanted much to do with her any more.

Air nomads didn’t usually get married. They all lived communally at the air temple, promised and celebrated but without the need for rings or papers. Aang had followed this tradition of his people. He and Katara weren't officially joined as a couple. She didn’t have anything to tie her to Aang except the man himself until Tenzin came along. People still called her the Avatar’s wife because it was a catchy epithet. And it was almost true. They had been nearly inseparable since leaving the Fire Nation at the end of the unrest.

Katara knew she should have been happy. She had an attentive partner who was also one of the most respected leaders in the world. They would sing songs about him and about the waterbender who had guided him to victory. She could travel the world. She wanted for nothing. But it was always there- the feeling that what she had was too much of what she did not want. If she wasn’t with Aang, she could be with her tribe, with her family. She could have become the tribe leader and let Sokka continue living peacefully in Kyoshi with his wife and daughter. He would have loved a few more years to himself. Maybe she’d still be friends with the man who ruled over this palace and the lands surrounding. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But she would never know.

She peered down at Tenzin, sadness prickling the corners of her eyes. He would never see her as happy as she once was. In the last few years she’d forgotten parts of herself. She now felt like she was only half of what she could be. Her heart was always somewhere else. She sighed. Tenzin’s eyelids were drooping again. Katara placed him back in his crib for his nap. She would have had a nap myself, were it not for the knocking.

She knew it was Zuko. He had an insistent way with doors, often kicking them in when his knocking wouldn't do. She was surprised, though. She had expected him to stay with Mai for the rest of the day. They were engaged, after all. But Katara knew she still wanted to talk to him. She just didn’t know how. Trying not to look as hopeless as she felt, Katara plastered a smile on her face before opening the door.

There he was, in all his cold and distant Fire Lord glory.

“Come with me.” He said. And she did.

The scene from a week ago replayed, but as they walked he said nothing. She knew where he was leading her. In this place she had been sneaking away from Aang, and he was forgetting for a few moments the fact that an entire nation lay on his shoulders. In a way, it felt as if they were going back in time.

> _He stopped to contemplate her question, his own eyes drifting skyward and to the stars. He could just say he was worried about his ministers. That would be easy. She would comfort him, tell him that she knew he would be a great leader to his people. That was her way, and he never doubted her sincerity in that belief._
> 
> _But he did not want to take the easy way this time._
> 
> _“What would have happened if I’d joined you sooner?”_
> 
> _The words slipped out of his mouth before he could halt their flow. They pooled thick like syrup at the base of his throat. This would be the beginning of the end. He knew it already, and he could not stop what was about to happen. He didn’t even think he wanted to._
> 
> _“I don’t think anything would have changed.”_
> 
> _“Really?”_
> 
> _“Really.”_
> 
> _“Then would you still have picked the Avatar?”_


	3. Zuko

He noticed the broken look on her face after Mai arrived. How could he not? It was such a familiar expression. It destroyed him, more than anything she could have said.

Mai noticed that he was pulling back, but she kept up the conversation as a show of respect for his history with the waterbender. He continued to laugh at her small jabs at the ministers, too distracted to realize the favour that Mai was doing him by not prying into their relationship.

There was nothing more Zuko wanted than to bolt out the door after her.

Katara must have thought he was stupid if she didn’t think he would see through her forced friendliness. She looked so uncomfortable it almost made him sick. Perhaps she had forgotten that they’d spent hours upon hours together, maneuvering politics and learning each other.

Zuko caught her eye as she was greeting Mai. The way suddenly drained of mirth was nothing short of debilitating for him.

Katara had to understand why he was going to marry Mai. She would have also felt that he didn’t need her any more. He had filled her seat at the table. Everything he had done, it showed her that he didn’t miss her. That wasn’t how he felt, but he knew that was how it would look.

For Katara, it wouldn’t even been a stretch to think that. They hadn’t corresponded in years, and even as she was standing before him they couldn’t cross that barrier of restraint.

Their only real conversation turned into an argument. His apology hadn’t changed a thing, and Zuko knew it was his fault. He was out of line, using her confidence in him to hurt her the way he was hurt, so long ago but still so fresh in his mind.

He hadn’t even needed to think upon the question she posed to him. He did not love Mai. Maybe he would, one day. He knew that Mai deserved better than that, after all she’d been through on his behalf. Since they were children, Mai had been waiting. He just finally obliged. It wasn’t fair to her, but he proposed to her out of a sense of duty and despair.

Last year, Katara announced that she was pregnant with the Avatar’s child. He’d been frozen in place for months. The peace summit came and went. Then, finally, he knew that there was nothing else he could do. Waiting any longer would be a fool’s errand. He gave in to his council’s long-standing demand that he marry. It had been a miracle that they were forced to entertain his bachelor status for so long, in any case.

When he called at Mai’s home and took her to dinner, he presented her with an heirloom ring, a fire ruby set in an intricate design of woven gold. The metal felt cold when he slipped it on her finger.

Their marriage wasn’t a surprise, simply a matter of course. They’d been dancing around the possibility for half a decade, now. They were a pair in all but name.

Mai knew it wasn’t love.

Perhaps Katara didn’t realize exactly why she had been caught so off-guard by his engagement, but Zuko empathized. He understood the agony of being shattered from the inside out. This was called heartbreak.

She could keep denying it all she wanted, but that was what her eyes told him. He wore the same scars.

The first time was when she had left his palace holding Aang’s hand. The second was when she wrote to tell him she was naming her first child Tenzin. The regret that he harbored in the moments between the strikes themselves pooled until they almost drowned him. Those wounds cut sly.

Finally, she mailed him to let him know she was visiting him.

It had taken over five years for Katara to come back. It all felt like a joke at this point.

Mai left after breakfast, telling him she had business to attend to. She was lying. Zuko appreciated the gesture. He simply nodded. They embraced briefly, and then she was gone.

Zuko had all but sprinted to Katara’s room. It was halfway across the palace, and he only stopped for a brief moment in front of her door to wonder if this was really a good idea. Before he could overthink it, he was already knocking. There was a touch of desperation in his eyes.

She answered the door knowing it was him, her emotions warring on her face. On the one hand, she was smiling, but her brows furrowed in stress. Her eyes were shining, but not in joy. They were glazed with unspilled tears.

“Come with me.” He choked out. And she did.

> _“Then would you still have picked the Avatar?”_
> 
> _She knew exactly what he meant when he said that. And yet, and yet, words would not come to her. This was his confession. This was his heart._
> 
> _His face was unreadable, emotion hidden behind walls he had been cultivating since his childhood. His fists were clenched tight._
> 
> _She wanted to reach to him, smooth out his fingers and sigh. But she would not. That would be crossing a line she had very carefully cultivated for herself._
> 
> _Katara closed her eyes to avoid his._
> 
> _“He is my destiny.”_
> 
> _She felt him lurch to his feet, the anger and the hurt radiating off his skin like a burn._
> 
> _“What if you’re wrong? What if there is no destiny?” And in his voice there was a plea. Or, what if her destiny was with him._
> 
> _The words grazed her cheek. They were barely spoken but she felt them burrow deep. She still could not bring herself to look at him._
> 
> _He sighed. Defeat and fatigue and sadness subsumed into one tiny, heartbreaking sound._
> 
> _She had known; she had just been in denial. She would never stop denying. That was why she froze the frantic beating of her heart._

They stood at the edge of his private garden. The quacking of turtle ducks filled the silence that settled over them. Katara’s fingers skimmed over the surface of the pond. Her fingers made ripples that collided with others, overlapping in endless circles.

Zuko just wanted to watch her. Contemplation consumed them both. He tried to see her in the way that he had refused to for years.

He found himself staring at somebody changed. She still had that raw beauty, but it was undercut by the bags underneath her eyes. Her smiles unfurled less often and when they did they were stiff. There was a weight to her, an ache to the way that she moved. The magnificent blue of her irises was not diluted, but they no longer reflected such tempestuous emotion. Behind thunderous colour there was a hollow like beach glass.

Of all of them, why had time chosen to hurt Katara the most? She had always been their strength, their force of will, their waterbender, capable of unyielding empathy.

She was still all of those things. She was Katara, less and more. She was everything, but she had been eroded all the same.

She began to speak. “Do you remember?”

“I do.”

He remembered all too well, turning the memories over in his mind like photographs, suspended in the glow of their youth. But they were fading, too. The distance of time morphed them to the point where at times he was unsure any of it even happened.

It all felt too much like a fantasy.

“I’m sorry, Katara.”

She lifted her head, a finger still dipped in the pool. “For what, Zuko?”

He had too much to atone for when it came to Katara. Even before these feelings found harbor in him, he was sorry for what his father had done to her tribe. He was sorry for what he had done to her and Aang and all of them searching for glory that never arrived. Now he was sorry for not being brave enough to contest destiny. He was sorry for not writing back to her because he was a coward, too afraid of how much it hurt him, imagining her life with the Avatar. He was sorry he had to wear this band on his finger, carrying on like he was okay.

He said none of those things. Regret filled the grimace he gave her. He felt frozen in place by his own remorse.

“I don’t know why I took you here.” he admitted, threading his fingers through his hair, stiff in a topknot.

Their gazes did not wander. Clear cerulean met incandescent gold. Her eyes were the subject of a brewing storm, troubled but searching. He knew that at one moment they could be in a rage, and in the next a chilling glacier. Katara knew how to express, and he envied that in her. Nobody else seemed to feel the way that Katara could feel. She turned hearts with her compassion.

She had turned him, after all.

The waterbender broke away first, rising from the pondside to walk to the stone bench. It was positioned underneath the shade of an apple blossom tree. She twirled one of the pale flowers between her fingers contemplatively, as if she wanted to pluck it out and thread it into her hair. Zuko felt a sigh build up in his throat. Her words cut through the serenity of the image.

“Why did you choose to marry Mai?”

It was a line of questioning that hovered dangerously close to the explosiveness of their last conversation, but there was no accusation in her tone. She genuinely wanted to know. She wanted him to love Mai.

Zuko decided there was no longer any point in hiding the truth of the matter. The time they had left was so short. He could feel opportunity slipping out of his hands. If he didn’t tell her now, he would never be able to. A feeling of deja vu overwhelmed him.

He stared past her shoulder as he spoke.

“I proposed to her because I couldn’t wait for you any longer.”

When the words were spoken, he looked toward the pond so he didn’t have to watch her reaction. He didn’t want to see the horror on her face.

The words were blunt, tumbling out of his mouth carelessly, because that was the only way he could bear to let them be heard. Five years he had been hiding it, ignoring it, denying it. Now he surrendered it. There was no more either of them could do to change the course of their lives.

He declared his truth in no uncertain terms.

Every celebration, he and Toph and Sokka tried not to notice the subtle changes in Katara. Every time he saw her face, he pretended that he didn’t wish to see her in the garden again, ripples on her skin and the moon lighting her eyes.

They knew she was not as happy. Maybe she wasn’t quite unhappy, but her slope of shoulders spoke of a weary resignation.

Zuko found himself wondering at the last gala if she honestly thought she was fooling them all. The cracks in her laughter, the bleak lines of her smile, they told the story for her. It was the thing they all knew but would never say, the way they shot each other worried glances when she left the table early or showed Aang a cold shoulder.

Aang. He wanted to be fooled, to believe that Katara never envisioned a different life for herself than this one. But even then, even him. Zuko caught him in his private moments, when the boyish grin slipped off his face and he seemed to shrink in his robes. Even he was cognizant of the change in Katara.

Zuko counted the Avatar as one of his closest friends. The boy- no, the man, who had saved his life. Like Mai, he was a victim to the game that Zuko and Katara had been playing for years.

It was not just cowardice that had stopped him from taking action. It was shame.

Katara replied quietly to his guilt.

“What do you mean by that?”

He knew by the broken glass sound of her voice that she knew exactly what he meant.

> _There were bread crumbs scattered all over the grass in his garden. Zuko had crushed the bread._
> 
> _Her throat seemed to close in on itself, choking the tiny sobs that emerged. She covered her eyes with her hands because she could feel her eyelashes become heavy with tears. Her words shattered against the pale bench._
> 
> _“I can’t._ We _can’t.”_
> 
> _She relived the events of the past year. She remembered Zuko, in all of his vibrant passion and all of his darkness. Katara had seen him work himself into exhaustion and suffer through all of his doubt, his uncertainty, his struggle. Every obstacle he faced, every political web he got tangled in, she was there. At times she could help, and at others she could only listen. He was different from Aang. He needed her in a different way._
> 
> _She had become more to him than either of them could say out loud._
> 
> _His truth crushed her the same way it crushed him._

“You know already, Katara.”

He was soft edges and caresses as he walked closer to her.

“You’ve always known.”

She blinked away from him. She couldn’t look at him, not now. Not like this. Her hands clutched at her skirt when she said,

“I don’t love you, Zuko.”

Perhaps the words should have stung, but she used them not as a conviction but as a shield. The fact that that was where her mind went first calmed every doubt that still lingered in his mind.

No matter the lies they told themselves in the dead of night, with nothing but their heartbeats to accompany their thoughts, _this_ was their truth.

“You’re not protecting anybody, Katara.”

When he said they words they sliced the air like a blade, cold with conviction.

She stood and faced him, her shoulders squared and that familiar tempest raging in her eyes. “What makes you think I’ve just been protecting him all this time?”

“Stop denying it. We all know, Katara. Do you really think that your closest friends wouldn’t be able to recognize your suffering?”

She shook her head, pressed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to believe it. She hadn’t for five years.

“I do love Aang.”

The words shuffled out weak and limp, filled with failure.

“Not the way he wanted you to. Not the night before you left this garden, and not even now. That hasn’t changed, Katara.”

Nobody said anything. Even the wind seemed to stop for them in this moment. “But you’ve changed.”

She was less and more, the same woman but struggling with mourning for the life she might have had. He had said it, but the surfacing of those words brought him no comfort. Katara’s eyes drifted from him.

“Am I supposed to feel like I’ve made the wrong choice, Zuko? Do I have to make my son a mistake, because I was too afraid to tell Aang I didn’t want to go with him five years ago?”

The grief of her confession echoed within him. Their carefully constructed pretenses were falling down around them, leaving nothing but raw emotion behind.

“I never said that.”

Because he never, ever would. Maybe the two of them made bad decisions, but he would never try to call her love, her child, a mistake. Those were her doubts alone.

“Why are you doing this to me now?”

Her words were nothing but a whisper on the wind, and Zuko caught them with a melancholy smile.

These words that went unsaid for so long were like ripples in a pond. They dappled and spread outwards, these deceptions that bled through their lives. How many people had they hurt with their lies? This was their last chance to let the water wash it all away, the things they had been so afraid to say.

Zuko had clung onto his dream for years. Her, by his side, his indomitable Fire Lady. She had been running from that same vision all along. Perhaps these things should never be spoken out loud, but they had both tried silence and still their wounds fester. They were being eroded from the inside out.

Perhaps they could try meeting in the middle, instead of perpetually moving apart.

“Catharsis.” He answered.

> _She was crying and he was standing there, probably sorry he ever said anything at all. She wasn’t sorry that he did. She wanted to apologize to him, instead._
> 
> _She always thought she knew what her path was. When she met Aang, she took that as a sign. When she discovered that she loved him, it only seemed like confirmation. She could see their future together, filled with airbending children and restored temples._
> 
> _She thought she knew right until the moment she didn’t. Every day since Zuko had joined them, she doubted a little more. What was love, really? Did she love Aang the way he wanted her to?_
> 
> _She told herself this was fate. Fate should win over passion._
> 
> _The uncertainty of that conviction was dangerous. This would destroy the balance they had worked so hard for. And for what? A girl’s immature heart?_
> 
> _Most of all, she didn't want to hurt Aang. She didn’t want to turn Avatar and Fire Lord against each other because she was a fool._
> 
> _Maybe she could have changed her mind, a long time ago. Maybe she could have when they were camping at the air temple. Or maybe the choice had been under Ba Sing Se. She didn’t know. Maybe there was never a choice at all._
> 
> _He sat down on the bench again, closer than before. Katara didn’t back away. They had a connection. Of course they did. It was indescribable but it was there, hidden between the spaces of their breaths and the way their gazes collided. Everything he felt, she felt with him._
> 
> _He loved her. She loved him. That much, Katara knew, was not a choice._

Zuko understood that the past and the present were intertwined. He tried to avoid it by picking a fight with her, by trying half-heartedly to make her hate him. He couldn't stand that lie. He could not avoid his feelings for her any more than he could avoid a future without her.

It was selfish of him to want her, and yet he did. Aang would be able to spend the rest of a lifetime with her. All Zuko wanted was Katara, pure and ephemeral, for a moment.

Their time was running out.

“When is he coming back?” She echoed his thoughts softly.

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded and crouched down by the pond once again. Her hands disturbed the placid surface of the lake. The turtle ducks appeared from behind the reeds to meet her. They squawked happily when she played with them, spinning hurricanes out of water and just thinking. Her face was indecipherable.

“How do you think Tenzin will turn out?”

The question caught him off-guard, but he answered honestly.

“He will be strong and wise. With you for a mother and Aang for a father, I wouldn’t be surprised if he changes the world.”

She smiled softly.

“Thank you, Zuko. With you for a godfather, he seems to have every advantage.”

“You chose me?”

“There was never any debate. Aang and I both knew you were the right choice. Who else could it be?”

He was quiet for a long moment, just letting his awe at her wash over him.

“It is an honour.”

They felt like they had all the time in the world until tomorrow, but when Aang arrived the week they had spent together would feel like nothing at all. They would wonder to themselves why they wasted so much of it. It wouldn't be much different than how they had passed by five years, though. That was the real tragedy.

> _He kissed her, for what would probably be the first, last, and only time._
> 
> _Dawn was fast approaching. He tasted of spice and apologies._
> 
> _They had created a tiny infinity of time between them when their lips met, but in the end they separated. They both understood the destruction of their desire. They were unwilling to let it consume them._
> 
> _She waited the night alone in her room. Aang would arrive at midday to take her away from the Fire Nation. Away from Zuko._
> 
> _Everything in her screamed for her not to leave. She did not want to forget the Fire Lord who taught her so much about herself, about the multitude of worlds they inhabited. She did not want to sever that bond. But, as it had been said, time and time again, this was her destiny._
> 
> _There was no arguing with it._

He dropped to the pond. His fingers laced between hers, pulling them from the water. Before he kissed her, his eyes searched hers. Understanding. Self-knowledge. Acceptance.

His lips were softer than the petals of the apple blossoms that bloomed above them. She let everything slip from her mind. All of her uncertainty, her guilt and her shame, all of it. Years of resistance melted, giving way to catharsis.

She loved Zuko, she was bound to Aang. That was the truth of things. She was being selfish, maybe. Unfaithful, maybe. She had also dedicated five years of her life to sacrificing herself. She told herself it was all for Aang, but it had been for her. Aang wouldn't have wanted this kind of self-immolation.

She hadn't wanted to know the truth of things.

His arm curled around her waist and pulled her closer. Her hands wound themselves into his hair, unwinding his topknot.

They separated for a moment, exchanging shallow breaths. Soft amber and placid ocean met again.

Firebender and waterbender left the garden, hand in hand. They fell into bed, hand in hand. She would not feel guilty. She had been so ashamed for so long, beating back this emotion, pretending it wasn’t there. She was done with all that, done with regretting her mistakes.

She and Aang were not a mistake. No more a mistake than how she fell in love with Zuko. They both needed her, and she was only now understanding what it meant to give.

> _There he was, waiting for her at the bottom of the steps. He wore an eager grin to greet her, calling her name. Zuko stood behind her, calling without words._
> 
> _Katara found that she couldn’t make herself move. It was as if her being was bound to the place she was leaving behind. The man she was leaving behind._
> 
> _She wasn’t ready to go. There were things she hadn’t said to him that he should probably know._
> 
> _It was too late._
> 
> _Aang climbed up the steps and tugged at her hand._
> 
> _“Katara, what’s the matter?”_
> 
> _His words rang hollow in her ears. She strained hard. She didn’t want to look at Zuko._
> 
> _The Fire Lord watched the scene with ambivalence. This was where it ended, the last intersection of their paths. He scraped the emotion from his face._
> 
> _Aang pleaded, “Katara…”_
> 
> _Then, Zuko placed his hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at him, without any hesitation. They exchanged a look that was impenetrable. This was their goodbye. Their hopes and their regrets, tucked into a single moment in time._
> 
> _“_ Katara _.”_
> 
> _And then she turned to Aang, smiling. She walked down the steps and then waved at the Fire Lord. She got onto the flying bison, and from then on they pretended that nothing had been said and nothing had been done._

* * *

History repeated itself endlessly, but for Katara and Zuko, this was the last time.

Katara held Tenzin in her arms, a quiet peace finally settling over her features. These were the secrets they kept for each other and for themselves. These were the stolen days that defined them, that they would find themselves returning to, time and time again. They would retread these avenues of memory and hold on, because these seconds were precious.

For all of their little tragedies, they had found clarity. For a moment and a lifetime, it was enough.

“Goodbye, Zuko.”

And this time, she meant it.

“I’ll see you in two months.”

And this time, he wouldn’t break himself over it.

They separated. The air seemed crisp and clear, free from the miasma that he had been breathing in. His ring no longer felt like desperation. For the first time in an age, he felt himself looking into the future instead of replaying his past.

The shadow she cast over his heart vanished, leaving behind only whispers and soft-edged recollections.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These violent delights have violent ends  
> And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,  
> Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey  
> Is loathsome in his own deliciousness  
> And in the taste confounds the appetite.  
> Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so.  
> Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.  
> \- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
